Memorandum submitted by the Ministry of
Defence responding to the Committee's Questions on various matters
relating to European Security and Defence
THE RELATIVE
CONTRIBUTIONS OF
MEMBER STATES
TO THE
HEADLINE GOAL
POOL OF
FORCES IN
TERMS OF
THEIR RESPECTIVE
WEALTH/GDP, OR
OTHER INDICATOR
The EU has not allocated proportions of the
Headline Goal to individual Member States. It was agreed at Helsinki
that contributions would be made on a voluntary basis. All EU
Member States have publicly pledged to improve their national
military capability towards this collective goal but how this
is implemented in national programmes is for each government to
decide. The range and type of capabilities offered is very extensive,
from teeth arm units, through equipment capabilities to a range
of logistic support functions, and are not directly comparable
in terms of their relative worth to the Headline Goal. The unclassified
summaries made available by Member States of their contributions
have been placed in the library of the House. To attempt to measure
the value of individual commitments by use of a standard indicator
is not practical. Any attempt to agree such an indicator, or set
of indicators, would be likely to be divisive and to distract
attention from concrete efforts to improve capability. For a number
of geographical and historical reasons, Member States have differing
proportions of their armed forces configured and available for
the type of operation envisaged in the Headline Goal, although
virtually all have plans in place to increase deployability. Member
States also account for defence and wider crisis management expenditure
in different ways thus adding to the difficulty of achieving a
meaningful comparison.
EXERCISES
ESDP political/military procedures will be exercised
for the first time in May 2002. This exercise will test top level
co-ordination and the decision-making procedures of the ESDP bodies,
including the Political and Security Committee, the EU Military
Committee and the EU Military Staff. This will be a valuable exercise
for proving the new high level structures and procedures. In 2003
there are plans to hold another exercise at this higher strategic
level with EU and NATO bodies, and a workshop to examine the role
of deployable Force Headquarters at the operational level. Beyond
that the EU envisages further exercises, expanded to include testing
of the linkages and procedures between the higher strategic level
structures and potential Operational Headquarters for EU-led operations,
for example with SHAPE and potential national Headquarters such
as the UK Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood. However,
no detailed exercise planning beyond 2002 has been carried out.
There are no plans to devise separate EU field exercises. We do
not assess this as necessary as current programmes of national,
NATO and bi or multi-lateral exercises are already extensive and
are deemed sufficient. In particular exercises already contain
a mix of warfighting and peace-keeping themes and so generate
the capability to deal with the sort of roles that the EU is likely
to undertake.
CONTRIBUTIONS BEING
MADE BY
NON-EU COUNTRIES
TOWARDS THE
HEADLINE GOAL
The Headline Goal itself is for EU Member States
to meet. Nevertheless, the EU has welcomed the contributions of
a number of non-EU countries who have pledged a wide range of
military capabilities to the process and have signaled a willingness
to participate in EU-led operations. These countries are: Bulgaria,
Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania,
Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia and
Turkey. However, this information has been received in confidence
from foreign governments and it is not therefore possible to share
these details with the Committee.
A400M PROGRAMME
On 18 December, the Secretary of State for Defence
signed an inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
to allow the A400M contract to be placed. The contract itself
was signed on the same day by the Organisation for Joint Armaments
Co-operation (OCCAR), on behalf of the partner nations, and by
the contractor Airbus Military. It provides for the development
and manufacture of 196 aircraft in a single launch order. The
UK's share is 25 aircraft. OCCAR will manage the programme to
standards agreed by the partner nations.
The A400M MoU and contract will enter into force
once final Bundestag approval has been given for the German commitment.
The German Government is confident that this will be forthcoming.
The commitment of other nations, including the UK, is subject
to the German signature becoming effective. If this has not happened
by the end of January 2002, these authorisations will lapse, providing
a further opportunity to review the position.
Were nations to withdraw or make any reductions
once the MoU and contract have become effective, full reparations
would be required to the remaining participants in respect of
any increase in costs to them as a result of such changes. In
addition, the industrial workshare arrangements would have to
be reviewed.
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